Lots of weird things have happened to me recently in conversations with different people.

A friend told me that . . .
1. something I had written made him feel aroused and dirty2. if I ever wanted to seduce someone, I could do it with that voice (we were talking over the phone). He promptly asked me to stop talking that way.
3. I am strong, smart, witty, and pretty
4. he couldn’t have sex with some girl, because he was thinking of me
5. of course -- there was no doubt in her mind that I wore the sexiest underwear in our group of friends
6. he didn’t like it when I said the phrase e-driven-mindfuck7. it’s impossible for women to masturbate
8. I have a strange geographically indefinable accent
9. she had other motives for getting me drunk
10. he thinks about me, because I am fascinating

Last night I told Jules the following:

You know, sometimes I type up parts of our conversations and publish them on the Internet.
How do you do that?
It’s easy, man.
What the fuck, dude. Don’t do that.
Why? Who cares.
I dunno.
Exactly.
Who would read what we have to say anyhow?
Nobody.
That’s still wild though, huh.
I guess.
Is that like the whole email thing, too?
Naw, it’s different.
Hmmm.
You gotta get online sucker.
Forget that – I’m not getting sucked into no box.
You’re stupid.
You’re typing this right now aren’t you?
No, I’m in bed.
Fucking liar.
No really, I swear.
You’re a fuck.
I try.

mistakes

yesterday I had to delete a post because i, apparently, didn’t have my head screwed on properly

You were in my shower today?
What does that mean?
I had you between my hands.
What?
You were in my hair.
Lilacs.
Lilacs.
What’s with the fucking riddles today?
It’s always the lilacs.
I don’t use that shampoo any more.
It doesn’t matter.
Was I really there?
The smell of you

and your laughter.
That’s a nice thought.
Which part?
The laughing.
For sure.
And smells that remind us of other people.
That too.
You going to stay there awhile this time?
Got a job.
Still have enough money?
Yeah. My account’s cool. And the house.
I worry about you.
I know.
I like it better this way

when we aren’t both a mess.
Who are you kidding?
I’ll make it right.
Was that a question?
Maybe. No.
You’ll make it.
You too.
I’ll call you when I get in tonight – to make sure you’re okay.
I’ll be fine.
I’m still calling.
Love you.
Love you.

When I was quite younger, I spent lots of time with a Japanese man.
He used to whisper to me in Japanese.
Soft words I couldn't understand.
Like liquid in my ear.
And ever since that language feels like an incantation to raise up my soul.

Leaving stings the skin. Like an indelicately placed burn from the sun. Our bodies recover, still bearing the mark. Returning us to a different place in time. Dimensions in which we are less than whole. Less, possibly, than we imagine ourselves to be now. When the white shades of the afternoon revealed the footsteps of the devil dancing. The pull of two tan hands against mottled sandstone. Back. Thighs. Chest. Wringing out the stains like last week’s soiled laundry. Like his father’s money. A down payment meant to slough off the past. Sanding down my skin to reveal the pulpy insides. Ripe and acrid as an orange. Waiting to be bitten by those white teeth. Pressed by those clean palms. Smoothed like a piece of white bond paper. Snapped into the typewriter on which to pound out another story. His story. Of me wearing a bathing suit in front of his parents. His friends. Where I am not an imperfection reflected in his million-dollar smile. There couldn’t have been anything to say when those hands, gliding over my back like summer kites, collided with the words spilling out of his lips, breathed into my skin -- you’re almost error free. The interstices between calculation, observation, salvation, and judgement blurred as his mouth counted its way down my spine. Collapsed my spine. And while bodies claimed one another. Taking possession of hips with hands. Embedding a false sense of love through the matching of lips and tongues. I tied mental ropes around his arms and legs. Resourceful gags. Made lists of personal items I would pack in my tennis bag hanging on the hook behind the closet door. The puma glowing in the darkness. My copy of Native Speaker underneath the bed. The red silk robe spilled only moments ago, like blood, in a pool on the slick ceramic tile. I already felt the pocket change, heavy and cold in my hand. Awaiting the bus. Fourteen blocks from here it would come. We would come. Then it could all be over. Me carrying my bag like there were other places I wanted to go. Him trailing after in boxer shorts the color of money. Each wanting to take back whatever we had done to set our souls running in opposing directions. Wanting the wave of our desire to sweep us up. Deliver us closer to the beginning of time. On the bus, while his fingerprints were still indelibly scribed on my flesh – his hot breath in my hair -- we became wild birds let loose from their cage. Without a common language to find our way back home.

. . . instead i abandoned my own language. spelled out all the numbers i could remember in Vietnamese. it’s what i could do. let the pronunciations spill out from the back of my throat and fill my silent mouth. it’s all we can do sometimes to escape the boundaries of our imposed borders.

Perhaps it's possible, for several sustained moments, to slip out of ones self. To remove words like the consequence of my desire and your jesus christ pose. Or the diametric vision of the antichrist contained in the low murmurings of the throat - concentrated in the furrow of a brow.

Suddenly I'm reclaiming something lost. Patching the past through a dance with a thousand electric eels. The choice. Eradicating the heavy weight of a gun in my mouth. Cocked and loaded. Deadly metallic pressure.

Words don't evoke the same meaning for everyone. But perhaps the act of speaking them aloud and with new connotation can replace and redefine previous acts. Can loosen the memory to include the latest still. Adding to the cannon of images that make up who we are.

Yesterday we talked about Nietzsche and Jesus. Heidegger. The way empty soda cans feel heavier in Europe. And I told a story about a man with two pairs of glasses hanging from his breast pocket. Of train stations in foreign lands. How the reverse image of a cloud in an unspecified body of water told me the truth about the world while I sat on a park bench in Berlin.

There are pictures in my head.
Limbs like holly branches. Tall. Lanky. Messy blonde hair pleading to be brushed. Someone who knows the meaning of the term - big air. Who knows how to grind. Whose knees and elbows bear the history of kissing asphalt. Practiced it like a religion. Sinister green eyes that reveal truths and youthfulness with every blink.

Do I use too many words?
I’m not the best person to ask
So
No
No what?
No I don’t think so

What’s this about?

Hey
Emotional break down
Those suck
Mm
Yalright?
Sure
Sure?
Mm
Wanna talk about it
No
Feel like crying?
Yeah
Do it
Naw
Do it
No
Wanna tell me to fuck off?

That usually makes you feel better
Fuck off, then
Say it with feeling at least
Fucker
That’s more like it
Why do you get off on me swearing at you?
Dunno
Weirdo
Yeah
Feeling bad?
Yeah
The worst?
Probably
Shit

Whatcha gonna do?
Dunno really
Gotta picture in your head?
Whatta mean?
Do you have a picture in your head?
Always
You’re alright then
Okay
I mean it
Okay
Now you’re a fucker
I’m alright
I know
I love you
I know

I miss you
I know
You don’t use too many words with me, but I already know all your stories. They’re my stories, now. And I like that. I need that. I need you. There’s not much that could shake you out of my pocket. Not miles. Not relationships. Not sin or misdirection. There will always be you and me and those memories are mostly filled with silences. You know how to use silences. Like rain, ya know? Like what’s missing sometimes. Then you know it’s hitting the window and you can sleep better at night.
Mmmmm I always feel like I mess things up. I’m toxic rain.
Toxic Avenger
Right
Quite

I always tell you it’s the image in your own mind that’s important. Not what other people say about that image and not what other people try to do with it. But you never listen.
I do listen

And I hear all of it
So
So I’m like Hamlet, ya know?
That’s great. Hamlet waited too long and died and stuff.
Well, not exactly.
Othello. Now there’s a man of action.
Oh good comparison.
What?
He was manipulated by all of his strongest characteristics into killing his wife. Then he offed himself.
Yeah, they both ended up dead, ennit?
Yeah

Even before I was old enough to carry a plastic card granting me the right to speed out of control, I knew that proof of identification was just an illusion. Identity isn't easily ushered in by a laminated thumbnail photograph. I didn't want to grow up anyway. Another day. Another opportunity to remind me that fresh blood in the mouth tastes like the smell of coins held for too long in the hand. A hot tinny disaster burning the back of the throat. The threat of your offending charms.

And when I transferred schools, I didn't tell anyone the truth. Because I couldn't say I was afraid that you would kill me. That the declarative rolled off your tongue like a request for more french fries. The Dean said all sophomores have boy troubles. So I shook my head while he fired accusations at me about skipping gym -- about smoking pot behind the portables with the bad kids. He didn't need to know that I couldn't allow anyone to see me naked -- that I just wanted to be sent away.

You were there at my new school. Leering at me from the eyes of every boy in homeroom, in wood shop, the hallways. I kissed them all. One after another until they became the same person. Faceless bodies with hands against my back. Exorcising demons with silent lips in the back of the library next to stories bound like books about King Tereus, of Caliban, and Helen.

(. . .)
dressed in the color of my desires,
you go your way naked as my thoughts,
I travel your eyes, like the sea,
tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,
the hummingbird burns in those flames,
I travel your forehead, like the moon,
like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,
I travel your belly, like your dreams,

your skirt of corn ripples and sings,
your skirt of crystal, your skirt of water,
your lips, your hair, your glances rain
all through the night, and all day long
you open my chest with your fingers of water,
you close my eyes with your mouth of water,
you rain on my bones, a tree of liquid
sending roots of water into my chest,

I travel your length, like a river,
I travel your body, like a forest,
like a mountain path that ends at a cliff
I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way,

(. . .)
because two bodies, naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source,
there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names, the truth of two
in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being ...

What does it matter when everything has come to order? Like Susan’s puzzles without the hole in the middle. Every piece in its place. The pawn, recently brushed off the table by an inadvertent cuff, returned to the board. But you can’t shake that nagging feeling that it isn’t 1941 or 2002. You’ve suddenly arrived in 1984. And there’s nothing you can do to get out of it. In fast forward. In reverse. The pawn piece is always returned. The missing elements to the puzzle always found and delivered. Snapped into place like the dead receiver at the end of an important phone call. You’re living the movie version of your life. The essence of a character that resembles you. Filtered and adapted through the camera, the director, the writers and producers. Filmic interpretations of your continual projections edited and spliced together to make a nice story. Comedic. Tragic. Historic. Anything palatable that will slide easily from the celluloid. Incantations of the tales other people roll off the tongue fly from the reel. Again and again and again.